Nothing good happens on the F train. Usually, anyway. Showrunner and star of “I Love LA” Rachel Sennott always knew that the end of the first season of the show would have to travel back to the East Coast, so that the core ensemble of Maya (Sennott), Tallulah (Odessa A’zion), Alani (True Whitaker), and Charlie (Jordan Firstman) could all face down some demons, make some big choices and/or mistakes to propel them into the next stage of their lives and, as so happens on the subway, get over New York and long to return to LA.
Logistically, the HBO comedy’s shooting schedule worked out so that Sennott could also direct Episode 8, “I Love NY,” but the scaled-up looks of the episode, and the big emotional payoffs, were ambitious challenges for her to take on. “It was kind of crazy that that’s the one that I did — 10 locations, shooting in New York for two days, with a new crew. It was a lot,” Sennott told IndieWire on a recent episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast.
But the finale was also very personal to Sennott. In some ways, no one was better placed to direct it. “The finale was sort of like a culmination of certain things I felt and experienced around the time when the show itself was getting picked up,” Sennott said. “I always knew that I wanted the season to end with the girls returning to New York. It feels like New York is the ex-boyfriend. That [place is] their demons. I want them to go home and face their demons.”
Throughout “I Love LA,” Sennott and the show’s writing team balanced her overall sense of the story with designing really satisfying episodic payoffs. Initially, Tallulah’s nemesis Paulena (Annalisa Cochrane) was designed to be a looming threat throughout the season, who we would only meet in New York, but the show moved her up all the way to Episode 2.
But every narrative arc — from Charlie’s simmering loneliness to Alani’s relationship with her parents, to Maya’s temptation to fall back into the orbit of her old boss (Colin Woodell) and Tallulah’s anxiety about taking the next step into fame — was designed to culminate in New York. It was designed, also, for Maya and Tallulah to make one more scrappy choice together, and to move one step closer toward tunnels between their mansions.
Sennott, as a director, balances catching those emotional payoffs and giving them their due with a playful use of space — it is always a bit of a jolt to see an old ex, after all. She brought a balance of approaches to shooting the finale, too.
“I feel like I got to steal a little something from everyone and get advice from people,” Sennott said. “Lorene [Scafaria], who’s a genius and one of our directors — the pilot and then [Episodes] 6 and 7 — she gave me advice on shot listing. I got to see the way Emma Seligman shotlisted, both with ‘Shiva Baby’ and ‘Bottoms.’ She built like a LEGO set of the set and then would move people around for blocking, which was really cool. And we had the sets built so I could go in there and walk around and [figure out] the drone, the crane shot. Halina Reijn, who I love so much for ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies,’ when she was directing, it’s almost like she was in the scene with the actors. So that was a really helpful tactic as well.”
‘I Love LA’Kenny Laubbacher/HBO
But some of Sennott’s favorite work in the “I Love LA” finale, and across the season, is work she did in post — specifically finding songs for the button of each episode with music supervisor Ian Broucek. “My favorite part of any movie ever is the needle drop at the end, at the credits, because that’s when you really cement the feeling of what the movie’s supposed to make you feel. And if you pick the wrong song for the credits, or if you end the movie at the wrong time, you can fuck up the whole thing,” Sennott said. “That moment really nails and solidifies how the movie’s supposed to make you feel, and in TV, you get to do that every single week. It’s such a rush. I feel like I got such a high off of getting to feel that feeling and leave the audience with a feeling every episode.”
“I Love LA” ends by pairing a slightly-grody, very tight, and often-inconvenient view of Lower Manhattan with The Cranberries’ “Dreams.” It is as succinct a way as any to sum up who these characters are, how close they are to the people they want to be, and how much Sennott and the show can still do with them. “ We have some episodes that are really, like, silly and wild and fun. But we have some episodes that I think are a little more dramatic, a little more real, and getting to leave people with different feelings every episode is really cool,” Sennott said.
“I Love LA” Season 1 is now streaming on HBO.
To hear the entire conversation with Rachel Sennot and make sure you don’t miss a single episode of Filmmaker Toolkit, subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.